So it’s very hard to believe the Seahawks rookie receiver when he tells you why he’s so effective as a slot receiver in the NFL.

“I think you have to have a bit of an anger management issue, to be honest with you,” Baldwin said Wednesday in front of his locker.

Anger management? Doug Baldwin? Really?

“I really can’t explain it. I’ve tried very hard to control it, obviously,” Baldwin said. “Nah, I’m not that bad. When it comes to football my competitive nature takes over. I don’t accept losing in (any) way, shape or form. I guess you could say that’s where it comes from.”

Or maybe it comes from the fact that he went undrafted, something of which he goes out of his way to remind himself. For example, Baldwin volunteered that when he plays the video game Madden 12, he doesn’t use the Seahawks. Or the Patriots, or the Packers, or any other NFL team.

Instead, Baldwin plays as the Pensacola Cavaliers, a team he created and comprised of only undrafted players. Seahawks rookie Josh Portis is his quarterback.

“I use the updated roster, so all the guys who are in free agency who didn’t get picked up, I picked all them up,” Baldwin said. “I like doing that kind of stuff, taking the teams that are not that good and trying to make them the better teams.”

Still, that doesn’t necessarily hint at anger management issues. Those only come out when he loses.

Baldwin must be drawing some kind of motivation from those Madden games. Through four games, he leads the Seahawks in receiving with 12 catches for 194 yards, both team highs.

Raise your hand if you thought when the Seahawks acquired Sidney Rice and Zach Miller that the team’s leading pass-catcher would be a rookie out of Stanford who most Seahawks fans had never heard of until late July?

Baldwin has made a name for himself as the team’s primary slot receiver, a position he says requires a certain nastiness to succeed at.

“Usually, slot guys are a lot smaller and quicker,” Baldwin said. “But at the same time, they have to go in there and block linebackers and safeties, so you have to be aggressive and have the mentality that I’m about to go in here against a guy that’s bigger than me, but I don’t care and I’m going to do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

He’s done that so far.

“Since day one he’s kind of caught our eye with the quickness that he has, the separation that he has and he’s one of those guys that really has those feels for the inside game,” offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell said.

A better feel, at least, than he does against his brother when the console is on.